Kingfisher County commissioners awarded a contract to Midwest Printing of Sapulpa to provide ballots for county elections, as needed, during 2021.

Midwest Printing of Sapulpa and Royal Printing of Oklahoma City both submitted bids of 13.5 cents per ballot but County Election Board Secretary Shawna Butts expressed a preference for Midwest Printing.

She cited difficulties county election workers experienced with the ballots for the 2020 general election.

Butts said the ballots. provided by Royal this year, lacked uniformity in size, had printing issues and barcode problems and were poorly perforated causing ballots to tear.

Royal Printing had received the county printing contract for the last two years.

Butts said she had already submitted examples of the ballot problems to state election officials.

District 3 Commissioner Heath Dobrovolny moved to accept the Midwest Printing bid for the coming calendar year with District 1 Commissioner Jeff Moss making the second. District 2 Commissioner and board chairman Ray Alan Shimanek joined them in voting in favor of the motion.

County Emergency Management Director Steve Loftis reported the county currently has 85 active cases of COVID-19 with five deaths.

He related later that ztate health department cases announced at 11 a.m. Monday included the following by zip code: Cashion six, Dover 1, Hennessey 15, Kingfisher 37, Loyal three, Okarche 12 (with three deaths) and Omega one.

In other action commissioners accepted the donation of 5,300 yards of shale for use in District 1, monthly activity reports from county offices, awarding safety bonuses of $250 to full-time county employees and $125 to part-time employees and monthly appropriations for county offices.